'The Interrogation' by J. M. G. Le Clézio
And so we arrive at the penultimate title in my so-called ‘debut novel month,’ something which has indeed spilled over into October. After this I will be discussing just one more debut, the debut of a much-loved author of mine whose more recent work has featured on here several times - though that’s all the clues you’re getting - and then, after that, I am bringing out the big guns. The literary big guns, that is. In plain English, I’m basically going to see how many modern and popular classics I can cram into a few short weeks. Stay tuned. Now, without further ado, allow me to introduce to you the latest work in my debut novel rundown, The Interrogation by J. M. G. Le Clézio.
J. M. G. Le Clézio - that’s Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, just in case you were wondering - was born in Nice, France in 1940. The Interrogation was published in 1963, when Le Clézio was a mere twenty-three years of age (needless to say I’m inspired) and it went on to win the Prix Renaudot that same year. The novel was also nominated for the Prix Goncourt, the highest literary accolade in France. Not bad for a twenty-three-year-old neophyte, right? Since the huge success of The Interrogation Le Clézio has gone on to author over forty further books and in 2008 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy called him 'an author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilisation.’ And, I have to say, this summation is spot-on.
The Interrogation is the story of an ex-student and sometime army deserter aptly named Adam Pollo - 'pollo' being the Italian for chicken, though I could just be reading into it too much - who is living, or perhaps squatting, in an empty seaside villa, cut off from ordinary civilisation. Eventually he succumbs to hallucinations of various kinds and one day, after addressing a crowd of townspeople in what can only be described as a manic frenzy, he is hauled off to a mental institution and then, drumroll, the interrogation begins! The Interrogation has, quite justifiably in fact, been compared to the work of Albert Camus, and those familiar with works such as The Outsider will certainly see some similarities, particularly in terms of character and setting.
What did I make of The Interrogation? I liked it a lot - Le Clézio is a writer of astounding profondeur who manages to take a very insular story (i.e. one man, one point-of-view, one specific moment in time) seem bold and expansive. Adam Pollo is a flawed and troubled character, certainly, however nobody does an anti-hero quite like the French, and Pollo seldom seems to come off as an honest-to-goodness bad guy. Furthermore, Le Clézio was already a real innovator at twenty-three; his seamless use of the epistolary form and the mock newspaper bulletins that follow Adam’s ill-advised oration all but confirm this. Be warned, however, The Interrogation represents fiction at its most literary. Imagine that you have before you some kind of 'literary-commercial’ scale, a little like that 'fear-love’ continuum in Donnie Darko but rather more straightforward and without the annoying redneck gym teacher, and The Interrogation would be placed right at the literary end. Nevertheless, it is a compelling read.
This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in October 2012.